Hasta La Gadget!

In these halcyon days of impromptu Vietnamese gadget reveals, it should come as no surprise that Acer’s Stream has gone from FCC filing to hands-on honey in a few days flat. Now it’s been the subject of a rather more thorough photo shoot in Ho Chi Minh City, and also was kind enough to share a little footage filmed from its five megapixel camera. Sadly, it’s not raw 720p footage that was YouTube’d, so it’s perhaps too early to draw conclusions — but we’ll go ahead and say the video doesn’t look very good just the same. Still, it looks to be yet another intriguing entry to the Android assault, and we can’t wait for the next leak.

Update: Thanks to kreatos for pointing out that there’s a second, albeit shorter 720p video on YouTube as well. We’ve got that embedded below and it does indeed look a good bit better — but you can certainly still tell it came from a cellphone.

[Thanks, Tran]

Continue reading Stream sits still for the camera, shows off its camcorder abilities (video)

Stream sits still for the camera, shows off its camcorder abilities (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 May 2010 07:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s secrets have been getting out a bit more than usual over the past couple of months, and few were shocked when Intel’s newest slabs of silicon slithered beneath the unibody shells of the freshest MacBook Pros. The Core i7 rig in particular drew attention, as this was the first MBP to surface with components within capable of rivaling Wintel machines from half a year ago. One thing that struck us in our own review of the unit was the lack of change outside of the CPU; you’re still dealing with the same underwhelming arrangement of ports, and unless you opt for the 17-incher, you’re still wondering why Apple ganked your ExpressCard slot. Enough of our ranting — we’re here to hear what exactly you have to say about Apple’s newest MacBook Pro. Would you have added in USB 3.0 ports? Finally caved and threw in a Blu-ray option? Added a “Flash-capable” sticker in the palm rest? Go on, get creative in comments below.

How would you change Apple’s Core i7 MacBook Pro? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 May 2010 01:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What turned into a pretty frenzied rumor this afternoon ended up being much ado about nothing, but there is something noteworthy. As the story goes, TechCrunch reported that Microsoft was going to completely replace Google with Bing as the search engine of choice for the iPhone once OS 4 launches next month. Enter All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher, who has a pretty strong track record on all things Redmond. According to her sources, what’s being discussed isn’t a full swap — instead, Bing is being considered for an “option” that users can decide between. None of this is what we’d call brand new gossip, and in fact, it sounds exactly like what we heard back in January. So, discussions still seem to be ongoing four months later, which is pretty interesting. For its part, the original TC article has been amended to say the issue is “more complicated” than originally presented. Hey June 7th? You really can’t get here fast enough.

Microsoft and Apple still in talks for Bing iPhone search option, Google is not on notice originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 22:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you bundle the original Pre in with the Pre Plus — and you pretty much can, considering how closely related they are — this is quickly becoming one of the most protracted, phased mobile product launches in memory. Yes, that’s right: as promised, O2 UK has now launched both the Pre Plus alongside its scrappier little sibling, the Pixi Plus, and you can get either one for as little as zero quid depending on how you play your cards. The Pixi Plus goes in your pocket for free on any plan, while the Pre Plus stays free as long as you spend at least £40 ($58) a month and scales up to £99 ($143) on the cheaper plans. We’ve got to believe there’s some awesome new (like, legitimately new) hardware in Palm’s pipe at this point — but a free webOS device is always a tough offer to pass up, right?

Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus now live on O2 UK originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 21:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It isn’t hard to get behind a company like Willow Garage, who not only has enough funding to invest heavily in building on ROS, an open source Robotics Operating System that’s gaining traction in the robotics community, but also managed to dig up enough spare change to give away $4.4 million in robots to a few lucky research institutions. There were 11 schools selected to receive the Willow Garage-developed PR2 Beta, which stuffs some very high end sensors, two articulated arms, and sixteen CPU cores on top of a rolling base — providing a lot of leg room for advanced functionality. Of course, in the world of robots, “advanced” means stuff like opening doors and not running over your cat, but with a common code base to work from and all this fancy hardware, hopefully these schools will manage to push the industry along a bit during the next two years that the PR2 Beta Program lasts.

Willow Garage starts shipping its PR2 Beta Program bots: get ready for ROS-powered hijinks originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 20:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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